He Left at 2 AM for Her Tampons, So I Left for Kenya novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Stitches

Rosemary stitches Alec's hand and neither of them lets go. Alec asks if Clayton is going to sign, and when she says no, tells her she is still his wife.

"Stomach bug," I said.

Clayton stared at me in the dark.

"Your mom made it sound bigger than that."

"My mother makes everything sound bigger. I was sick, and you went out, and when you came back it was morning."

"I brought the tampons and a coffee."

"You did bring me a coffee," I said.

His face softened, relieved, and he put a hand on my shoulder.

I stepped out from under it.

"That's your side of the fence," I said, and pointed at the low wire that ran between the staff guesthouse and the volunteer huts. "That's your side. You don't cross it."

"Romy, it's a wire."

"Then it should be easy."

I walked the rest of the way alone.

My hands were shaking, so I held them under the tap in the little bathroom until they stopped.

I had told him a lie in two words, and he had taken it without another question.

That was the part I couldn't forgive, more than the night itself.

At two the next afternoon, the generator housing split open.

Alec had put his hand in to hold the fuel line while Wanjiru's nephew swapped the clamp, and the housing bit him from the heel of his palm to the base of his thumb.

He walked into the supply room holding it up and bleeding steadily onto the floor.

"Don't make a face," he said.

"I'm not making a face."

"You're making the face."

"That's my face," I said. "Sit."

He sat on the exam stool, and I turned on the lamp and washed the wound out.

It was four inches long and clean, and it needed eight stitches.

"Who taught you to do this?" Alec asked, to give himself something to think about.

"You did. Year one. Pig's foot."

"I remember the pig's foot."

"You made me do forty."

"You cried."

"I did not cry. I was allergic to the pig."

His mouth went crooked.

I took his wrist in my left hand and turned it palm up under the lamp.

His hand was big and rough and warm, with a faint scar across the knuckles.

I had held that hand in the operating tent when it was steadying a boy's artery, and I had held it for a handshake on my first day.

I had never held it still while it bled.

I numbed the edge, waited, and began.

Thread in, thread through, tie.

He didn't flinch and he didn't look at the needle.

He looked at my face.

"Your pulse is high," I said, with two fingers on his wrist, because I was a nurse and it was my job to report it.

"I lost some blood."

"Not that much."

"A fair amount," Alec said.

I knew a fast pulse when I felt one, and I told myself the generator accounted for it.

When the last stitch was tied, I laid the gauze over it and kept my hand there, flat on his palm.

I should have let go.

He should have pulled away.

Neither of us moved.

Out in the yard somebody started the generator again, and it caught on the third pull.

"All done," I said.

"Thank you."

I looked at the gauze, since I couldn't look at him.

"Rosemary," Alec said.

"Keep it dry for a week."

"Rosemary."

"And don't put it back in the generator."

"Is he going to sign?"

My hand went still on his.

I had thought he was going to say something else, and I was angry at myself for having thought it.

"No," I said. "He thinks I'm sulking."

"Then you're still his wife."

He said it flatly, without cruelty.

"On paper."

"I've never seen the paper," Alec said. "Three years you've been here, and the papers never got signed, and you never filed for one without him. I assumed that was a decision."

"It wasn't."

"Wasn't it?"

I took my hand off his.

It was cold where it had been.

He got up and held the bandaged palm against his chest, and paused at the supply room door.

"I have a rule," he said. "I made it for a reason. I'm not breaking it for a woman who's married."

"I didn't ask you to."

"No," Alec said. "You didn't."

He went out.

I washed the blood off the lamp, and then the stool, and then my own hands again.

Through the window I could see Clayton in the yard, shirtless and sunburned, sweeping the same square yard of dirt for the third time while Marissa held out a bottle of water.

The papers were still in his shirt pocket, folded in half, going soft with sweat.

I stood at the window and thought about Alec's pulse under my fingers.

Clayton looked up, saw me, and waved.

I didn't wave back.

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